


The Fastidious Blood of Ahlam

by Interrobam



Category: Aladdin (1992)
Genre: Community: disney_kink, Courtship, F/M, First Date, Fluff, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:47:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobam/pseuds/Interrobam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Sultan of Agrabah's eldest son came to court her late in the day, on the third new moon since her father had announced her eligibility. He was a plump man, and stout as well, with a kind face. She watched him come through the doorway, bracing for another recital of resources and fashions. He glanced down at her seega board, his face lit up. </p>
<p>     “You play?” Ahlam was shocked for a second, she felt her snake tighten sympathetically around her shoulders.</p>
<p>     “I... I do. I play against myself mostly, it passes the time between suitors.”</p>
<p>     “Ah, then you must have been practicing quite a bit.” He winked at her: playfully, not seductively, and his mustache ruffled. “I'll have to be at my best form.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fastidious Blood of Ahlam

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Disney Animated Kink Meme.

Jasmine is cut from her mother's cloth more than she will ever know. When she dismisses her suitors it is with a wrinkle of the nose and a curve of the lip that would set a nostalgia into her mother's father's heart if he were only alive to be witness to it. When she mocks and sets tiger upon a Prince from a far north kingdom, the Prince's father remembers bitterly her mother's barbs, her biting snake. Her father, the Sultan, does not see this. He does not understand where she draws her willfulness from. He only remembers what he himself saw in the Panguian: light, humor, cleverness of story. He was not audience to her treatment of the suitors that came before him.

Years before Jasmine is bitterly set against marriage, the future Panguian felt the same. As Ahlam sat on her cushion, a seega board before her, her snake draped around her shoulders, she watched her suitors like a cat to a mouse. They came one by one: they presented their kingdoms, their wealth to her. They told her about the clothes, the jewelry they would buy her. They spun tales of lush gardens, sweet feasts. She sat there, her face stony, and commented on their arrogance and shoddily constructed metaphors snidely. A few of them she told fables, stories she spun from her imagination and faith about haughty hunters outsmarted by tigers and Djinn who warped the wishes of humans. Her stories were her pride, her blood and passion, the reputation that was joined to her name before even her noble blood. Their blank and passionless faces, the patronizing things they mumbled about her tales, told her everything she had to know about the noblemen. She sent them away. If they did not leave on their own she pressed her hand to her snake's spine and he let out a low, promising hiss. It did not take much to get them out of the room after that.

The Sultan of Agrabah's eldest son came to court her late in the day, on the third new moon since her father had announced her eligibility. He was a plump man, and stout as well, with a kind face. She watched him come through the doorway, bracing for another recital of resources and fashions. He glanced down at her seega board, his face lit up. 

“You play?” Ahlam was shocked for a second, she felt her snake tighten sympathetically around her shoulders.

“I... I do. I play against myself mostly, it passes the time between suitors.”

“Ah, then you must have been practicing quite a bit.” He winked at her: playfully, not seductively, and his mustache ruffled. “I'll have to be at my best form.” She allowed him, as her honored guest, the first turn, and their game began in earnest. He was a clever player, knowledgeable of many strategies, but he was overly cautious. She had both form and passion in her mind as she played, as she claimed his pieces as her own, and in the end the risks she took paid off. The Sulan's son was humble in face of his loss, neither arrogant from denial nor angry from embarrassment. She began to warm to this stout man, so unlike the other pampered idiots who thought she was already theirs. They were halfway through their second game when she decided to give him one final test. 

“Would you like to hear a story?” He perked up immediately, his smile wide.

“A story from _you_? A tale from Ahlam the Storyteller, who is known throughout this fine city as the finest crafter of fables born in a hundred years?” He leaned over and stuck his elbows on the seega board, knocking his pieces aside without a care. His cheeks were flushed with thrill. “Of _course_ I would.” Ahlam, left bashful by his flattery, so passionate and clumsy that it could be nothing but sincerity, laughed. Her snake hissed softly into her ear, shifted his coils. She supposed he liked the Sultan's son as well. She reached out to take his hand in her's, squeezing it gently.

“I'll tell it to you later.” She whispered, winking playfully in turn “On the night of our wedding.”

_If only_ , the Sultan muses through his haloed, one-sided memories as yet another nobleman runs ranting from the garden _Jasmine could be so decisive._


End file.
